True Detective (Season 2) (2015)

Creator: Nic Pizzolatto
Cast:      Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams, Vince Vaughn, Taylor Kitsch, Kelly Reilly

The season's story takes place in California and follows the interweaving stories of officers from three cooperating police departments; when California highway patrol officer and war veteran Paul Woodrugh (Kitsch) discovers the body of corrupt city manager Ben Caspere on the side of a highway, Vinci police department detective Raymond "Ray" Velcoro (Farrell) and Ventura county sheriff's office CID Antingone Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) are called to assist in the following investigation. Ray is in cohorts with career gangster Francis "Frank" Semyon (Vince Vaughn) who was attempting to legitimize his business with his wife (Kelly Reilly) by investing in a rail project overseen by Caspere, but loses his money when Caspere is killed, prompting him to start his own investigation. 

True Detective follows anthology format with each season having a standalone story and characters. So, there was no need for HBO to rush it and air a season within a year from the end of season one. I don't know why they did it and maybe the competitive pressure from Netflix might have forced them. What made season one unique was the fact that there was only a single writer (Pizzolatto) and a single director (Cary Fukunaga) involved primarily in the creative process. This is pretty unusual for a TV series since they are always under pressure to deliver a season of the show every year which translates into a team of people getting involved in the creative process. But having this anthology format should have helped HBO to stick to the formula that worked in Season 1 but they chose not to and so, multiple people were involved for writing (it was not writing room level but still) as well as directing and it actually did harm the overall quality. 

There has been a lot of hate for this season from the critiques but I don't share their level of hate. It is true that there are some terrible lines in it, primarily in the first four episodes. Plenty of people questioned the casting as well but I though Farrell and McAdams were uniformly great in it. Performances of both Vaughn and Kitsch are a bit uneven and some of it had to do with the ridiculousness of some of the lines. But by the end of the season, I did like them all and thought overall they were pretty good.

Another reason for all the hate was the complexity of the plot. IMO, the complexity actually helped me enjoy the show even more since it was a cerebral challenge.  I do think some of it was made deliberately complex since the show is about the detectives in it and not entirely about the plot. Same thing happened with 'Inherent Vice' where the plot was made almost incomprehensible and deliberately so. In TD season two, that level of complexity is not there and I was able to figure out most of it and an outline of what happened is only needed to enjoy the show. Trouble is that people have a habit of putting themselves in detective's shoes and try to solve it for themselves and eventually gets fed up when they cannot remember all the names and make all the connections. It is much more fun when it is not laid out for you with terrible expositions and you only have a vague idea about what happened over the course of the season. The crime at the center of it turns out to be quite random, in terms of where it came from, setting off a chain of events that affects all sorts of people in high places and the way it gets investigated is also pretty random and that is fine with me.

In season one, we know that the people in power had involvement with the crime but it ends without any resolution regarding those people. In season two, we follow them throughout the season and ends with a significant number of people from both sides (bad and good) getting fatally involved. If you think in terms of survival of central good characters, season one did give a happy resolution even though they didn't get all the bad guys, while in season two, we have a bitter-sweet end with more stress on the former. On the whole it is a pretty good watch but its standard is much more closer to a House of Cards season rather than True Detective Season one. Get over your obsession with season one and enjoy it for what it is. I do hope HBO gives a bit more time and have a more perfect season next time round. Get back Fukunaga if they can.

PS: This slate article Link pretty much explains the entire plot in a very good fashion, but, you can read it only after finishing the first seven episodes ahead of the finale. 

Rating: 3.5/5

                                                                          

True Detective (2014)

Creator:  Nic Pizzolatto
Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Cast:       Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Monaghan

The lives of two detectives get entangled over a span of 17 years as they hunt a for a serial killer in Louisiana.

The season one of the anthology format HBO series True Detective ended yesterday night/today morning crashing HBO Go in the process. It is the ultimate opposite to the Netflix produced House of Cards and its binge release model where the entire season is released in one go. House of cards is a great watch as long as you don't get much time to think about it since there isn't much depth to the story. True Detective is something which need time for the viewer to think, chew on and digest and the frenzy it has created in the internet over the last 9 weeks is testament to that. The brilliant title credits, existential nature of the dialogs, the mythical universe of Carcosa and the Yellow King and at the end of it all you are left with a feeling that they only scratched the surface with their investigation: which I think is very much intentional.

The interviews that Nic Pizzolatto has given over the last month helps a great deal in interpreting or confirming your interpretation of the season. The idea of Carcosa and Yellow King comes from Robert W. Chambers book called 'The King in  Yellow' which got a sales boost because of the TV show. It is a collection of ten short stories and the first four of them mention a play called 'The King in Yellow' which induces despair or madness in those who read it. In similar vein the case ultimately don't implicate any people higher up in the food chain and one feels that those who mattered escaped at the end of it. The detectives know it and we the audience feel it. Marty's daughter Audrey storyline is not taken up and there are many intentional loose ends which ultimately is the whole point.

Pizzolatto has also spoken at great length about storytelling and its importance to mankind. The penetration of religion is proof of that and the creator himself is an atheist who grew up in a very religious environment. In the show Rust starts off as a nihilistic atheist and ends on an optimistic spiritual note with the brilliant line at the end:“Once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light’s winning.” The weight of the world or the universal truth seems to be on his shoulder in the earlier episodes and by the end of the season he seemed to let it all go and find comfort in being spiritual which is essentially what religion do for a lot of people. When you are faced with questions, ugly truths and purposelessness, then faith goes a long way in solving all that by ignoring all the above said things. The same is with the case: they didn't get anyone directly connected to the senator and had to be contend with the dead end that is the death of the lawn mower man. The same thing happened with Reggie Ledoux in 1995 who before his death utters that these things will continue to happen. Rust also says the same thing during the interrogation scene where he goes 'time is a flat circle'. 

Another one of my interpretation is to do with the show itself. In the first five-six episodes it was a real genre bender when it comes to the buddy-cop investigative series. By the end it kind of tailed off which again I think was intentional. One can compare it with way the show ended with the allusion to the age old story of light Vs darkness as opposed to the real world situation of moral ambiguity. 

I will most certainly be revisiting the whole season soon looking for more clues. It is good that it will be having a different story and different characters next season. It can be really seen as an eight hour length feature film and the fact that it had just one single director unlike other normal TV series made a big difference in terms of its quality. In what is described as a golden age of television, I think it will be quite difficult to top this season of True Detective.

Rating: 5/5